From the Edge archives, October 1995: Phil Harrison on launching Sony’s PlayStation

Phil Harrison has witnessed the PlayStation’s evolution since the very beginning. Having joined Sony in 1993 as product development director, he immediately went underground to start the console’s European development and support group, working closely with the Tokyo R&D team, which was completing the hardware and OS design. One of his key objectives was to spread the PlayStation message to the development community in Europe, as well as to hire talented technical support staff and software engineers (to whom Harrison refers as the ‘unsung heroes’ of the European division). Now, as communications director, he is heavily involved with the European marketing strategy for the machine. Edge spoke to him at SCEE’s London HQ.

I got my PS in 98' with a free jampack demo. I played Gran Turismo, Spyro and Metal Gear Solid demos from that disk. My life changed forever!!

I subscribed to PlayStation Underground as soon as I was offered the opportunity, I did it through mail. With the suscription I was able to get seasonal JAMPACK demos discs that had the best games available for PS.

Looking at the journey of gaming on Sony consoles since ps1 launched really brings back memories. First game I saw was a racer, I think it was called Porsche. 2nd game which made me consider getting ps1 was Resident Evil. 3rd game, Tekken. After seeing those games I asked my father to get me a PS1 if I achieved high grades in school. I did and I got it :)